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<title>Haunt Me by looktothestars</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26862754">Haunt Me</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/looktothestars/pseuds/looktothestars'>looktothestars</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, Gen, Season/Series 02, Uhhh how do i tag this, i guess</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 18:13:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>619</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26862754</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/looktothestars/pseuds/looktothestars</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>She isn't quite gone. Not yet.</p><p>Prompt from celsidebottom on Tumblr: "can I request some Haunt Me with the real Sasha checking in on the other Archival assistants after the not!Them has taken her?"</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sasha James/Tim Stoker (implied), very vaguely - Relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Haunt Me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She didn’t quite know how she was able to cling on here, just at the edge of nothingness. Even after all she’d seen, she still couldn’t quite believe in ghosts, not proper ones. Except, somehow, she <em>was</em> one? Was. Was not. It was hard to say, really.</p><p>Surely, she thought. Surely she couldn’t actually be d- Actually be <em>gone</em>. They’d notice, they <em>had </em>to notice, maybe not today or tomorrow or the day after, but eventually. Unless they didn’t. Unless they… <em>couldn’t? </em>In a world of flesh hives and monsters with too-long hands, it wasn’t too hard to believe; it didn’t mean the thought hurt any less.</p><p>Except it wasn’t true pain she was feeling, just the memory of it. Everything was dulled, distant, the sensations she should be feeling just out of reach. Even here, drifting through the archives like a piece of dandelion fluff on the breeze, watching them grow rapidly apart, the sadness and regret she knew she was supposed to feel were just– just that. Something she knew she was supposed to feel. A pale, false version of what it should be.</p><p>And oh, wasn’t that fitting? False emotions for the real her, real emotions for the false her. But… They <em>were </em>real, weren’t they? Those emotions? Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew it wasn’t true, not at all. Those eyes were empty and dead, no matter the expression on her– on <em>its</em> stolen face. But the thought was difficult to grasp, as though whatever it was doing to make them believe it was real was strong enough to reach through to her, wherever she was, what little remained. Stranger things have happened.</p><p>(”Stranger things have happened,” the her that was <em>not</em> liked to say. There was always a little smirk with the phrase, like an inside joke only it could understand.)</p><p>For a while, she did nothing but watch as it crept its way into her life and tore it to pieces. As they who’d been her friends acted like she’d always been awkward and cold and wrong, so wrong in every possible way. Every interaction she watched over brought with it a vague hope that this was the time they’d remember, followed by a now-familiar disappointment as they never did.</p><p>She was unforgettable, she’d said. She was unforgettable, she’d thought. She was unforgettable, until they forgot her.</p><p>They all forgot.</p><p>Who was she?</p><p>She was… an assistant. She assisted. She helped. She helped them, the ones with names she couldn’t quite remember. The small one with his greying hair and darting eyes and scarred hands clutched so tightly around his battered tape recorder. The tall one, big and soft and always so caring, even when he was afraid. And the one whose face pulled at her heart in a way she didn’t know how to describe, whose smile filled what was left of her with the ghost of warmth. (He didn't smile much anymore.)</p><p>Yes. She helped them.</p><p>A mug nudged away from the edge of a table here, extra words highlighted on a statement there. Sometimes they came back to a book to find it already turned to the page they needed, or to a phone number scribbled on a stray Post-it. Never often, it took far too much energy for even the smallest things, and never anything digital either. That made sense, what with the tape recorders.</p><p>They never noticed. Her help was always written off as something they’d done already and just forgotten about, or happy coincidence, or some other justification for the things she was <em>sure</em> they knew weren’t normal.</p><p>It didn’t matter. Noticed or not, none of it helped in the long run. Not really.</p>
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